Chapter 94: The Red Lake

Yes, Chief. We can’t wait any longer.

There’s something wrong with the Red Lake Group. If we keep working with them, we absolutely cannot drag this out.

That’s right. During this time, several hundred of our brothers have died. If we wait any longer, more of our people may die for nothing.

Chief, give the order.

The others around him chimed in at once, raising their voices in agreement.

In the underground chamber, with half-beast corpses strewn everywhere, each of them breathed more heavily, their eyes burning with fury.

The stern-faced middle-aged man did not answer. With his hands clasped behind his back, he paced through the piles of bodies, studying the walls on either side.

Suddenly, his gaze fell on the hole punched through by Tang Mubai. A cold glint flashed in his eyes.

Old Pig, he said.

Here. A short, stocky man hurried over at once.

Can you crawl through there, catch the killer’s scent, and track him to where he’s hiding?

The stern-faced middle-aged man pointed at the opening and asked calmly.

I should be able to. The stocky man nodded instinctively, then suddenly realized what was being implied. His face lit up. Chief, do you mean the killer came in through this hole?

More or less.

Then it must be! He can’t have gotten away! The stocky man said with certainty. The gate wasn’t broken, but Old Elephant and the others were killed. The killer could only have come in through this hole, and escaped the same way. Hmph. Since I’ve found the trail, let’s see where he can run!

As soon as he finished speaking, the bones in his face shifted. His broad nose, once so ordinary, abruptly transformed into a pig’s snout.

Sniff, sniff.

With a pig’s snout on his face, the stocky man inhaled the lingering scent in the air and exclaimed with excitement, Found it! Chief, wait a moment. I’ll track him now and find where the bastard is hiding.

With that, he dashed forward, leaped up into the opening five meters above the ground, and bent low as he hurried through the passage.

Tang Mubai’s lingering scent was distinct beneath that pig nose.

The stocky man moved almost blindly, swiftly, as if his eyes were shut.

He was just about to catch up to Tang Mubai—

Boom!

A muffled explosion suddenly echoed.

The passage ahead of the stocky man, who was following the scent, suddenly caved in. Rocks and soil crammed the tunnel in an instant.

And it wasn’t just one place that collapsed.

Boom, boom.

The dull rumbling kept coming.

Every stretch of passage Tang Mubai had traversed collapsed in sequence, blocked solid by dirt and shattered stone.

The scent the stocky man had been following was cut off at once.

This made him both furious and alarmed. Backing away, he began cursing at the top of his lungs.

When he returned to the underground chamber, he still would not let it rest, and shouted at the stern-faced middle-aged man in frustration, Chief, that killer is far too cunning. He made the entire passage he used collapse, so I can’t track him anymore. That bastard seems to know I’m after him!

The stern-faced middle-aged man said nothing.

After a long silence, he gave a faint, weary sigh. Enough. You were right. We can’t wait any longer.

Tang Mubai returned to the cave dug out by the blue-scaled sticky worm and glanced back at the collapsed passage behind him, then let out a breath.

Just now, his sixth sense had suddenly sounded an alarm, warning him of danger approaching from behind.

Without hesitation, Tang Mubai brought down the passage he had traveled through, and the danger vanished.

This also proved that his misgivings had been correct: among those gathered in the underground chamber with the half-beasts, there was a master among them.

He did not know whether it was a strong fighter among the half-beasts or an expert from the Red Lake Group.

Whichever side it was, he had no intention of meeting them for now.

The passage dug by the blue-scaled sticky worm had already been destroyed.

In that case, this cave beneath Monkey Mountain might as well be destroyed too.

Only by utterly ruining it could he avert future trouble.

Besides, the clay in this cave was almost gone; no more blue-scaled sticky worms would come here anyway.

And Monkey Mountain was about to be developed. Once everything here was leveled, that would be the end of it.

Having made up his mind, Tang Mubai acted at once. On his way back, he collapsed the passage section by section.

By the time he returned to the middle of Monkey Mountain, all the tunnels had disappeared without a trace.

Naked, Tang Mubai did not linger on the mountain. He quickly went back down, got into his car, and returned to the mercenary company’s base.

After getting home, he added another point to Yang Kai’s talent.

He had plenty of lifespan now, so it was time to use some of it.

Just like with Fang Shuixian, raising a talent once cost thirty years of lifespan.

Those thirty years were well spent if Yang Kai could produce even a crude mecha.

As for what happened afterward, that would depend on the situation.

After taking a bath and changing into clean clothes, Tang Mubai sat down before his computer and searched for information on yin malice and yang malice.

If he wanted to unleash the Twofold Element Sword Qi and bring out its full power, he first had to find yin malice and yang malice.

In the new world, all manner of baleful energies existed in heaven and earth.

Water malice, fire malice, poison malice, yin malice, yang malice, earth malice...

These baleful energies could be absorbed and refined into mystical arts, each with bizarre properties and limitless might.

Therefore, wherever such energies existed, unless the place was too dangerous, martial artists would often absorb them in advance and store them away.

Indeed, baleful energy was very valuable.

After all, modern technology had advanced to the point where tools could be used to absorb baleful energy and preserve it in special containers. When needed, one could simply draw it out and absorb it directly, making it extremely convenient.

Naturally, such baleful energy came with an equally exorbitant price.

Ordinary martial artists could not afford it at all.

Tang Mubai searched the marketplace on the martial arts network and discovered that fire malice, poison malice, earth malice, and the like each sold for more than ten million federal credits per unit.

He had never seen how much a single unit actually contained, so he could not tell for sure.

But judging by common sense, it probably was not much, and whether it could even condense a strand of Twofold Element Sword Qi was impossible to say.

Besides, even if it could, Tang Mubai did not have that kind of money.

More importantly, he needed two kinds. The Twofold Element Sword Qi was formed by absorbing yin malice and yang malice.

Both yin malice and yang malice were rare.

They were nothing like corpse malice or blood malice, which could be artificially created.

Tang Mubai searched for a long while and finally decided to look for places where yin malice and yang malice were known to exist, so that he could go and gather them himself.

But after reviewing everything, he found news of yin malice, while almost no information about yang malice existed.

If yang malice could not be found, could fire malice be used in its place?

Tang Mubai turned the idea over in his mind.

Although fire malice was not yang malice, the two were partially interchangeable in some respects.

Just as yin malice could be substituted with water malice or ice malice.

If he did that, the resulting Twofold Element Sword Qi might be somewhat weaker.

But that was still better than having the ability in name only and being unable to use it at all, wasn’t it?

Thinking of this, Tang Mubai began gathering information on fire malice.

Compared with yang malice, fire malice was far more common.

Redleaf City itself had one such source.

Red Lake.

This Red Lake did not refer to the Red Lake Group, but to a lake on the outskirts of the western district of Redleaf City.

In fact, the Red Lake Group took its name from this lake.

At the bottom of Red Lake ran a magma tunnel, causing fire malice to permeate the lakebed year-round.

The exact location was within a fissure three to four meters wide and several hundred meters long.

According to legend, this fissure, lying more than a thousand meters beneath the lake’s surface, had been cleaved open with a single blade strike by an unmatched master eight hundred years ago.

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